Contact sports, including, but not limited to football, have historically relied upon the use of both head and helmet as a tool in stopping an opponent. In addition to arms, legs and feet, the head has been used as a necessary appendage to be implemented in effectively slowing or stopping an opposing player (as depicted in the “head first” approach of U.S. Pat. No. 7,527,568). Yet, as several key studies have concluded, concussions and sub-concussive trauma have led to both short and long-term impacts affecting the short term, and overall long-term, health of players both on and off the field. While rule changes (with an increasing emphasis on player safety) have been implemented over the past several years, concussions and resulting traumatic brain injuries (mild traumatic brain injury or MTBI being the most common) continue. Immediate sequalae have long been noted to range from headache, dizziness, vision disturbances to complete loss of consciousness (LOC), yet recent evidence suggests that untoward effects can range from subtle (e.g. cognitive deficiencies, loss of certain brain functions, nausea and vomiting, lack of motor coordination, tinnitus, double vision, and light sensitivity) to more insidious symptoms including pronounced cognitive impairment, sleep disturbances, emotional symptoms, physical manifestations, disinhibitions and other mood and behavior changes to more long-term health related issues including Parkinsonian manifestations and Parkinson's Disease, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, long-term memory loss, psychiatric disorders, depression, and, most poignantly, chronic traumatic inflammation, axonal injury, and encephalopathy (CTE)—a progressive degenerative brain disorder in individuals with a history of repeated head trauma.
Given the above, full contact sports in general, and football in particular, are undergoing a paradigm shift for the health and safety of all of its participants. To this end, a transition from the historic style of tackling (e.g. head first) to a “rugby-style” tackling, those tackling techniques meant to keep players heads away from impact or so called “Heads-Up Football,” are being implemented and engrained into current players in an attempt to decrease the overall incidences of head trauma and concussion. In this “modified tackling method,” hand placement, leveraging, shoulder tackling (leverage-based shoulder tacking), and foot placement, as opposed to head-first tackling, are emphasized and used in tackling the opponent (e.g. near and around the hip and waist area), properly placing hands on the opponent, maintaining leverage (with helmet across the opponent and lowered shoulder used in displacing the opponent), and “wrapping up” the opponent in an effort to thwart the opponent's forward advancement. Succinctly, players are instructed to “rise” into the ball carrier with their chests, shoulders and arms in an ascending manner, as opposed to leading with their head.